How Trivia Crack 2 built on the success of the original – and 5 things it could do better

Trivia Crack 2 is the sequel to the extremely popular quiz game Trivia Crack, which has been downloaded over 500 million times since its release in 2013 . Developed by Etermax, who have made their name in word, puzzle and trivia games, Trivia Crack 2 quickly climbed to the top of the download charts following its August 2018 release.

The game itself follows a familiar quiz format of question and answer, across subjects like sport, history, science and art. It builds on the formula of the original, turning trivia into a social experience with numerous game modes that are designed to be played against friends and family.

In this game dissection, we’ll take a close look at how Etermax have implemented an excellent first-time user experience (FTUE) for Trivia Crack 2. We’ve also got a few suggestions and tweaks for how it could improve its social reach even further.

Dissection of Trivia Crack 2

Our video runs through the full game experience of Trivia Crack 2, from discovery through onboarding and growth.

What you can learn from Trivia Crack 2

Trivia Crack 2 takes a familiar gameplay concept and polishes it to make for an immediately-engaging multiplayer game. Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which it builds upon the success of the original, and has pulled in so many players in just a few months since launch.

1. Simple gameplay, but packed with depth

Despite the simplicity of the question-and-answer loop, it contains plenty of depth with a wide variety of game modes, challenges and quests. Etermax have taken an incredibly-familiar trivia format and wrapped it in several different ways to play, giving the player tons of choice. As Trivia Crack 2’s core gameplay is a well-established format, it gives the developers scope to mix in this variety without confusing players.

The further a player progresses, the more depth is revealed. There’s global and local rankings, daily quests, and a collectible meta-game with tons of colorful unique characters to collect. There are so many reasons for a player to keep playing, and to keep their sessions fresh with new modes and activities each time.

2. Guided path through the first-time user experience

Trivia Crack 2’s FTUE is clear, with an in-game character directly addressing the player. This character explains the mechanics and fundamentals of the game, and reduces the risk of the player being overwhelmed by the amount of options and features that are visible on the game’s home screen.

Menus are grayed out until a player has familiarized themselves with the mechanics.

It even goes one step further to avoid confusion for the new player, by graying out sections of the screen that it doesn’t want a player to focus on just yet. When the player has completed the tutorial section, the rest of the home screen opens up.

3. Ads are kept away from new players

Trivia Crack 2 is a free-to-play game with optional IAPs for various in-game power-ups and items. Its other monetization is in the form of ads, but a new player won’t see any until they’ve played a good few minutes of the game and got through the initial tutorial. This keeps players hooked on the gameplay, and also avoids distracting them during a period where they’re still learning mechanics.

After that, ads are shown more frequently but come at clearly-defined points in the gameplay: usually, after a player has got a question wrong and ended their session. This trains players to expect an ad before they can try again, rather than having an ad appear at seemingly-random intervals and disengaging the player from the game.

4. Strong social features hook players for a long period

Rankings – both global and national – let players compare their abilities to others on a large scale, with prizes available for the top players.

Rankings give prizes and add longevity to the game.

As well as individual rankings, players can also team up (like a clan) and compete together against others. This feature will have a huge impact on retaining players over a long period of time. Players can apply to join existing teams, or create their own with friends.

Being part of a team will come with its own engaging factors, as players will want to keep playing in order to contribute. It adds another level of intensity and excitement to the game, with players trying to avoid being a “weak link” for the team and instead striving to carry the rest up the rankings.

Suggestions for further growth

While Trivia Crack 2 has already been a big success for Etermax, and showcases an excellent FTUE, there are still a few areas that we think it could improve to help boost its virality and retention. Here’s a few of our suggestions:

1. Incentivize push notifications

The very first thing a new player gets hit with is a short, generic message asking them to accept push notifications from the app. There’s no explanation as to what kind of notifications these will be, or why it might be in a player’s interest to accept them.

Push notifications are a fantastic re-engagement and re-activation tool. Trivia Crack 2 could boost the proportion of players who allow notifications by incentivizing them. There are all sorts of positive reasons why a player might receive a notification, such as:

An opponent has challenged them, or completed their turn

New daily quests are active

The rankings have been updated

They have prizes waiting for them

Their lives have refilled

There are special offers in the shop

Trivia Crack 2 could clearly explain some of these benefits up-front when asking a player to accept permissions for notifications. Alternatively, the game could hold this permission request until further into the FTUE, when a player has a better understanding of the game’s mechanics and why it would be in their interest to accept notifications.

However, Trivia Crack 2 is a very strong IP due to the popularity of the previous game. Games with strong, established IPs tend to have a higher acceptance rate for notifications than newer titles, regardless of when permission is requested.

The original Trivia Crack currently ranks higher than the sequel.

2. Move on from the original Trivia Crack

As you can see in the video above, the original Trivia Crack is currently ranking higher in the App Store than its sequel. The two games are essentially competing with themselves for traffic.

There can be merits to this strategy – for example, Etermax are going some way to cornering the market on trivia games. All the same, the original Trivia Crack is now quite an old title by the standards of mobile games, and the sequel builds in some new features that is currently helping the game to monetize better.

Etermax could consider gradually stopping support for the original, migrating players over to Trivia Crack 2, and removing it from the App Store. This would then leave Trivia Crack 2 as the top title for trivia games on mobile.

Players must sign in before they can play.

3. Let players try the game as a guest

Trivia Crack 2 requires players to login before they can play, which makes sense as a player-versus-player multiplayer game. Connecting with social accounts is smooth, but Etermax could also offer a player the chance to play as a guest the first time they play.

This would allow anyone reluctant to create / use an account to still try the game. There’s several reasons a player might do that: they might be distrustful, or simply don’t want to take the time to login and want to get straight into the game. A guest account would allow them to do so.

Over time, the game could then push those guest players to create a “proper” account, and highlight the benefits for doing so (eg, save your progress, compete in teams and rankings).

4. Improve the sharing experience

Trivia Crack 2 misses a big opportunity when it comes to sharing. Players can invite friends by posting to their social media or via messaging apps, but the game could do much more.

For example, any time a player gets a question wrong, that would be a good opportunity for a share to social / messaging to ask for help. It could be framed as challenging their friends, to see if they could do better. A different approach would be to let players brag about knowing the right answer to a tough question An image of the question and options could be included with the share, and a link for new players to download the game.

As Trivia Crack 2 already asks players to create an account before they can play, many players will already be connected via their Facebook account. This will make the actual process of sharing to Facebook more seamless.

5. Use rewarded referrals to boost acquisition

Trivia Crack 2 could also make use of rewarded referrals when players share to social / messaging apps. When a link to the game is shared, whoever clicks it could receive in-game items like gold bars. Equally, the sharing player could receive a reward every time someone clicks their link.

For a game that is driven by its social core, there is quite a lot of friction for two people wanting to play together. It relies on both players having the game downloaded, and each knowing the other’s username so that they can search for the other player to challenge.

Instead, Trivia Crack 2 could allow players to send challenges via social media / messaging. These challenges would come with a deeplinked URL which instantly starts a head-to-head game between the two players when clicked.

This would incentivize Trivia Crack 2’s players to tell their friends about the game in the hope of getting them to play too. Rewards could be tiered, based on the number of friends a player successfully invites: the more invitees, the bigger the rewards.

Other game dissections

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